Environmental Stewardship

A lot of of the Charity’s work is dedicated to the management and conservation of some 170 acres of wonderful landscape around Walberswick village. 
Much of this is focused on the Common - the large NW area shown in red on the map below - but all of the Charity's land is actively looked after.

ES Update June 2026

Common Nightingale

Bird Song has been tremendous this month. Along Palmer’s Lane one morning in early May 13 different calls were heard - everything from Chiffchaff and Wren to Nightingale and Wood Pigeon. 
The Common Nightingale is particularly evocative, very at home in heath and wood, it features in the new book by Robert McFarlane and Jackie Morris (The Book of Birds): 
“Barley bird, will you parley with me? Can we sing a song together, a duet in the twilight? Me in my human voice, you in yours, each entwined with the other’s? ….Your song’s a flickering, liquid, ticker-taping trill; it’s bubbles through an upturned bottle, a breathless, full-throttle poem of ebb and flow”
The Latin name is Luscinia megarhynchos - singer of laments with a large bill. Of course, the singing is all about finding a mate and producing a brood! 

Please keep to pathways and keep dogs close to help them breed successfully. And be aware that Adders too are breeding and roaming across much WCLC land. 
 

For well over 15 years we have worked in partnership with Natural England under a Countryside Stewardship Agreement, renewed from January 2024. This agreement ensures that the Charity is able to continue its environmental work until at least 2028.

The vast majority of this work is devoted to improving the diversity of habitat on the Common. Our aim here is to provide a mosaic of vegetation which allows all heathland features to flourish, including pioneer heath and bare ground which benefits rarer invertebrates, birds, reptiles and plants. In recent years, nightjars and nightingales returned to the Common and there have been at least five calling male nightjars - an unusual and distinctive churring trill.
If cattle or sheep were able to roam freely across the Common as they did many years ago, the more invasive species would be kept in check and a greater diversity of vegetation maintained. But nowadays the number of walkers with dogs would mean that any livestock would have to be fenced in. That would then destroy the free-roaming, unenclosed nature of the landscape which is the essence of a Common.